About 4 months ago, Joe Mande and I realized that in Kanye West’s song “Heartless,” it sounds a lot like he’s saying Arliss.  You know, Arliss.  From the HBO show Arli$$.  Or as Joe’s girlfriend, Kylie, called it once, Arli Money Money.  Anyway, what happened was Joe and I started re-writing the song to be about Arliss and BAM!  No more than 140 days later we fucking made it!  At least a verse and a half of it!

What I never considered a comfort in life until now is this:  If you have a friend who’s running into a convenience store and you shout “Hey, can you grab me a pack of Cheetos?”  he is for sure going to get you Cheetos.  It might not be the exact size bag you want, but you’re going to be eating from that bag exactly what you wanted.  At least that used to be the case.  Our friends south of the border really fucked it up.

I found this in a grocery store a few days ago.  How upset would you be if you asked for Cheetos and got these instead?  I’ll tell you how upset you’d be.  Very.  Because Chidos are disgusting.  As you can see at the bottom of the bag, the chips are are chili and lime flavored.  I guess that is technically true, but it would be more accurate to call them chilli then lime flavored.  Remember those old commercials for Mr. Goodbar where people used to argue the points “first you taste the peanuts then you taste the chocolate” versus “first you taste the chocolate then you taste the peanuts”?  And you’d just think “Shut the fuck up.  It tastes like a chocolate bar with peanuts in it.”  Well in the case of Chidos there’s no argument.  First you taste the chilli flavor.  The gross, underwhelming chilli flavor.  Then some seconds later, in some cases as much as 15 seconds later, you get a horrifying lime taste at the back of your throat.  Delicious cheesey powder never enters into it.  And on top of all of that, the bag design is horendous.  You would think if you were going to rip off the name of a chip you might as well rip off the bag too.   Anyway, I have no photoshop skills so I made my friend Joe Mande make the following fake Mexican chips.

Thanks, Joe.  No Thanks, Mexico.

I’m only just now getting to the end of the third season, so I can’t yet say that this is the best seven seconds of The Wire ever.  But it is the certainly the best seven seconds so far.

The Best of The Wire from Noah G on Vimeo.

I was just in Houston for a week and something really amazing happened there.  I saw a Jack in the Box commercial that I’m pretty sure I made in the future.  I just can’t imagine that anyone else except for me three years from now could ever come up with this.  The idea of cows the size of schnauzers….I suppose a lot of people could come up with that.  But adding the caveat “but they’re cattle.”  That was clearly me.  I hope I get paid really well to make this when I finally do.  And I also hope that I’ll be really nice to all those dwarfs because there’s going to be a whole ton of them.

I was alerted by a Facebook status update from my friend Drew DiFonzo Marks about something truly awful/amazing/terrible/awesome/asshole-ish.  Denny’s… They’re like…  They fucking made the Grand Slam Breakfast into a sandwich.  It’s the Grand Slamwich.

They put everything from the Grand Slam Breakfast into a sandwich.  Let’s take another look at it.

I can’t believe they did this.  But at the same time, I can’t believe they didn’t do this 30 years ago.  I feel very confused about the whole thing.  I have no idea if I love it or hate it.  I think I might be leaning slightly towards hate.  Not because it’s gross, but because…whyyyyyy would you not just put the hash browns in the sandwich?  You’re so close, Denny’s.  Just do it.  What’s holding you back?  You’ve already come this far; just put the potatoes between the bread along with everything else.  An interview with the Denny’s CEO, Nelson Marchioli, revealed no explanation for the sandwich incompletion.  What the interview did reveal is that Nelson Marchioli has absolutely no grip on reality.  Here’s a quick excerpt:

Q: Are you looking at any portable hand-held sandwiches?
A: Yes. We’ve been testing in our Dallas market a Grand Slamwich.

Q: Ahh. A tribute to the famous Grand Slam Denny’s meal.
A: It has eggs, bacon, sausage on potato bread glazed with maple syrup. It would remind you of something you’d find at Starbucks or Panera Bread.

Ummmm.  This actually just reminds of me of something I’d find at Denny’s.  I don’t think Panera Bread is really looking to corner the market on “potato bread glazed with maple syrup.”  And Starbucks?  No, not even close.  Anyway, Marchioli went on to say that they plan to price the Grand Slamwich under $5.00.  So, breakfast is on me for everybody who has ever read this blog.

In 1998, the hampster dance became one of the first of what came to be known as “viral internet type things that you look at.”  In the decade that has passed since, most of us forgot all about the Hampster Dance (I’m not spelling it wrong; that’s just how it is).  But then the other day I heard the song Whistle Stop by Roger Miller.  For those of you who haven’t put serious time into researching that song, it’s the song that was sped up and used on the original Hampster Dance page.  So I started thinking about those crazy hamsters and just for laughs, I typed in hampsterdance.com to see what was going on.  Turns out it’s no laughing matter.  It’s a full blown night terror.

Yeah, that’s right.  The Hampsters are a band now.  And their songs seem to suggest that they’re recruiting our kids into some strange National Socialist youth alliance.  They’re calling all kids.  And it’s terrifying.

Calling All Kids by The Hampsters (click to play)

The only way that song could be more creepy is if they replaced the word “kids” with “children.” If they would have done that, Calling All Kids could have rivaled the creepiness of Time to Party.

Time to Party by The Hampsters (click to play)

These are some breathy, aggressive hamsters.   All I can think about when I hear this song is the scene in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where you see Shredder’s lair with all the kids that he lured in with pinball machines, half pipes, and menthol cigarettes.  I have to assume the Hampsters have a similar lair.  And beyond that, I have to assume that the children they’re keeping in this lair are getting a horrible education.  Because these hamsters don’t know shit.  Especially Dixie and Hado.

Sorry, Dixie, but Texas is not your home country nor has it been anybody’s home country since 1845.

Okay, Hado.  There seems to be a number of things you don’t understand.  First of all, that’s not a keyboard.  Second of all, keyboards don’t need passwords.  Perhaps you thought you needed a password to change whatever the hell that is into a keyboard, but that isn’t at all how passwords and things relate to one another.

So clearly these hamsters are idiots.  They’re idiots and they’re creepy and they’re trying to get to our kids.  And Santa seems to think they’re boring.

Last night (more towards this morning) I was watching St. Elmo’s Fire with my friend Bob.  In case you haven’t seen the movie, one of the plot lines is that Kirby played by Emilio Esteves is trying to get a doctor played by Andie McDowell to fall in love with him.  This sparked a discussion between Bob and I about Andie McDowell that included these three sentences verbatim:  1.) “Andie McDowell is really great.”  2.) “There isn’t anything I don’t like about Andie McDowell.”  and 3.) “We should Facebook Andie McDowell!”

See, when you’re stoned at 4:30 in the morning, sometimes you accidentally like Andie McDowell a little too much.  But I didn’t think our stoned infatuation with her was so far outside of the mainstream.  But I was proven wrong.  Here’s what happens when you search for Andie McDowell to try to Facebook her.

Holy Shit.  People really hate Andie McDowell.  And, frankly, I think it’s unwarranted.  So in order to bring the zeitgeist back to equilibrium, I’m going to anemically make fun of the people who joined these groups.

Okay, Sarah Dawe.  A couple of things here.  You’ve set up a scale that makes Andie McDowell the highest score. This is the opposite of what you’re trying to convey. That was your first mistake.  Secondly, you call her Andie McTrowel.  A trowel is a gardening tool.  Thirdly, you’re an idiot.  None of this make any sense.

Really, Carol?  You get sick of people telling you that you look like somebody who is universally considered attractive?  I would imagine that if you have to choose the creepy silhouette over over a real photograph as your profile picture, you probably shouldn’t be cherry picking your compliments.  Also, never say “Geesh” again. And another also:  what the fuck happened to you on New Years eve that caused you to spend New Years day shitting on Andie McDowell (see the date on the comment)?

Gareth, you sound like a movie villain who doesn’t know what words mean.  And you should recognise that there’s a spell check on your computer.

Oh just get a life, would you?

UPDATE: Since this was originally posted a few hours ago, it has been brought to my attention that “recognise” is the correct U.K. spelling.  My apologies to Gareth.  I hope he doesn’t hunt me down with a space laser.

UPDATE 2: A last name has now been blurred and omited from the text after a polite yet curt email request.

As you may or may not know, my friend Joe Mande and I are semi-regular guests on the long time public affairs program The McLaughlin Group.  We were on the show this time, this time, and this time.  And it was wonderful.  Basically the show consists of the moderator, John Mclaughlin, and a bunch of pundits going nuts and yelling at each other until everybody gets exhausted and the show ends.  Everybody has a great time.  So when John McLaughin asked Joe and I to appear on his other program, McLaughlin, we were ecstatic.  We figured it would be even more fun than the McLaughlin Group.  But we were sadly mistaken.  John was incredibly boring.

Gather everybody around the computer because you’re all about to have a great time singing with each other.  Sometimes it’s hard to articulate just how a jingle makes you feel.  I guess all I can say is that….I think there’s God in this.   God wrote this jingle.  New York’s own Cohen’s Fashion Optical hired God to write a jingle and he absolutely nailed it.  I guess I have to start keeping kosher now.

Who wants to go with me to pray and get new frames?  Come on.  We’ll be so fun and happy.